Early in the morning of New Year's Day 2009, Oscar Grant, age 22, was fatally shot by a transit police officer as he stood on a railroad platform in Oakland, California. Protests followed, and persist, in the wake of the incident described this way by The Justice for Oscar Grant Committee:

"Oscar Grant was a young Black man returning home by way of the Fruitvale BART station after celebrating the New Year. This was the only excuse the cop needed to end Grant's life execution-style. Maybe Oscar was too loud, too proud, too Black. Maybe he was too calm during the taunts of the police. Or maybe it was for nothing at all."